The extensive literature on risk, risk society and the welfare state suggests that fundamental transformations are taking place that affect the social solidarity (Taylor-Gooby 2004, 2011) and the class compromise (Baldwin 1990) on which the welfare state rests. Post-industrial society produces new social risks (Bonoli 2004) that are not covered or can even be aggrevated (Cantillon, Elchardus, Pestiau and Parijs 2003) by the traditional risk protection programmes of the welfare state. Modern risk society (Beck 1992) is characterised by a new logic of social production of risks in which the welfare state itself has become a producer of risks, because it perversely aff ects the structure of employment, family life and marriage. Diversity, fl exibility and uncertainty are increasing in social relations but also at the level of ideas. Consequently, the life course is seen to be the result of the choices made by individuals throughout their lives and therefore the structure within the individual life weakens (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). All these transformations are suggested to erode welfare state solidarity. Notions of individual choice, individual failure and individual responsibility become more important in people's views about risks and the welfare state and therefore traditional welfare state solidarities are dissolving.

It is this line of reasoning that is investigated in this book. By analysing the changing perceptions of risks and the changes in the willingness to show solidarity with others, we investigate whether traditional welfare state solidarities are dissolving and whether a new basis for solidarities is coming into being.

The welfare state was founded on a shared perception of the social nature of risks people encounter in everyday life and the willingness to take some form of collective responsibility for these risks. This responsibility is subsequently translated into collective strategies of risk management: the social policies of the welfare state.

In the main institutions of industrial society, the firm and the city, the risks of poverty, sickness or unemployment became systemic risks, that is: the unintended result of production processes, economic cycles, life cycles and of processes of urbanisation. The welfare state is in the first place founded on the perception of these risks as social risks, that is: the risks arising from the main institutions of industrial society gradually came to be seen as produced by ‘the system’ and not by individual failure.